Tijuana Mayor Starts Term, Champions Workers' Rights

Latin America & Caribbean - In Brief

December 2, 2004

TIJUANA, Mexico -- Jorge Hank Rhon, a flamboyant and controversial multimillionaire, started his three-year term Wednesday as Tijuana's new mayor, pledging to weed out corrupt police and clean up the city. "Tijuana is full of hardworking people, and I want to give them all a chance to work toward progress," he told The Associated Press on Tuesday, shortly before giving his inaugural speech. "I will give everyone a chance to be heard." Hank Rhon's surprise victory Aug. 1 returned the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, to power in Tijuana, a city the party lost to President Vicente Fox's National Action Party in 1989.